On Thursday, many of the leaders responsible for overseeing services going through huge change will gather in St Albans for the annual, two-day Guardian Public Services Summit.

One of the issues that will be top of the agenda – after whether they will have any staff left in 12 months' time – will be new delivery models for public services. Can social enterprises or mutuals, spun out from existing public sector bodies, deliver services on the scale required?

The government is keen to keep up the momentum of spinning out public services into small, employee-owned units. Last week it appointed arch-Blairite moderniser Julian Le Grand, professor of social policy at the LSE, to chair a taskforce promoting the mutualisation of public services. Will Le Grand be the enforcer that Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude acknowledges is needed to push through these plans?

Maude says there is support from middle and senior public sector managers for mutual or employee-owned organisations. "I think there will be plenty of senior managers who see this as a way of creating more rewarding lives and jobs for people who are currently their staff," he comments. "There will be senior and middle managers who themselves become leaders of mutuals."

But Maude also knows that not all managers are embracing the programme. "I think some managers will see it as a threat," he acknowledges. When the relationship between managers and their staff becomes contractual, rather than direct, some managers will, he says, see that change as a threat. "Some – not most, but some – will try to obstruct it. We need to have mechanisms to enable those obstructions to be thrown out, so that we can intervene in a helpful spirit to unblock them."

Will Le Grand be a grand unblocker? He will certainly be working with the big names in the mutual world. The biggest, of course, is retailer John Lewis, which is on the new taskforce, alongside Co-operatives UK and the Employee Ownership Association.

Patrick Lewis, partners' counsellor at John Lewis, and great-nephew of the original John Lewis who founded the chain, is enthusiastic, not surprisingly, about the concept of employee-owned organisations, but remains cautious about the government programme. "The big thing we have learned is that this type of organisation requires time and care," he points out. "This requires very long-term commitment to setting an organisation up in the right way and then to support it, support it, support it."

It's important, adds Lewis, that staff and managers understand what is involved in an employee-owned organisation. At John Lewis, that support includes a weekly magazine in which employees can air their opinions – anonymously if necessary – about a wide range of concerns, and a number of staff forums. These too, need support: "It's a lot of effort to learn about engaging successfully," says Lewis. "It sounds easy, but in fact it is very hard."

So how can the government, in a time of cuts, provide this kind of intense and long-term support to fledgling mutuals? "We like to think we're a government that's able to take a longer-term view than most governments, because we're a coalition with a fixed term and we're going to be here until 2015," says Maude.

Last week also saw the launch of a second wave of pilot mutual schemes, following the 13 initial projects launched last year. The government has appointed a number of organisations as mentors to the projects. John Lewis, for instance, is working with one of the first mutual pilot schemes, the Swindon intermediate care centre.

Why would a retailer be keen to assist a healthcare organisation? "We believe passionately in this idea and the more co-owned businesses there are, whether they are private or public sector, the more we will be understood – and that has a value," says Patrick Lewis. In fact, he says the retailer has gained from the experience of working with mutuals such as Central Surrey Health. "They have managed a fantastic level of engagement with their community care partners and we have learned from them about that," he says.